Pious Pursuits: German Moravians in the Atlantic World(7 European Expansion & Global Interaction)

Recent work on the history of migration and the Atlantic World has underscored the importance of the political economies of Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the eighteenth century, emphasizing the impact of these exchanges on political relations and state-building, and on economic structures, commerce, and wealth. Too little of this work explores culture and identity outside the Anglo-American context, especially as reflected through religious developments of radical Pietists and other Germans, the second largest group of migrants to the American colonies in the eighteenth century. This volume offers a fresh vantage point from which to examine the Atlantic World. Quick to traverse the conventional political boundaries that divided European states and American colonies, Moravians departed their homeland to form new congregations in the most cosmopolitan European cities as well as on the North American frontier. Pious Pursuits explores the lives and beliefs of Atlantic World Moravians, as well as their communities and culture, and it provides a new framework for analysis of the Atlantic World that is comparative and transnational.

Table of Contents:
List of abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction PART I: THE BIRTH OF MORAVIANISM: CONFESSION AND CULTURE Chapter 1. Imperial communities Mack Walker Chapter 2. Manuscript missions in the age of print: Moravian community in the Atlantic world Robert Beachy Chapter 3. Deep in the side of Jesus: The persistence of Zinzendorfian piety in colonial America Craig D. Atwood Chapter 4. Moravian physicians and their medicine in colonial North America: European models and colonial reality Renate Wilson PART II: MORAVIAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY: IDENTITY AND ASSIMILATION Chapter 5. Fashion passion: The rhetoric of dress within the eighteenth-century Moravian brethren Elisabeth Sommer Chapter 6. New birth in a new land: evangelical culture and the creation of an American identity S. Scott Rohrer Chapter 7. "Commerce that the Lord could sanctify and bless": Moravian participation in transatlantic trade, 1740–1760 Katherine Carté Engel Chapter 8. Piety and profit: Moravians in the North Carolina backcountry market, 1770–1810 Emily Conrad Beaver Chapter 9. Moravians, the market and a new order in Salem Michael Shirley PART III: RACE AND GENDER IN THE MORAVIAN CHURCH: A PROTESTANT EXCEPTIONALISM? Chapter 10. "No one should lust for power... women least of all.": Dismantling female leadership among eighteenth-century Moravians Beverly P. Smaby Chapter 11. The role of the pastor’s wife in the pioneering generation of protestant German-speaking clergy in the American colonies Marianne S. Wokeck Chapter 12. Unlikely sisters: Cherokee and Moravian women in the early nineteenth-century Anna Smith Chapter 13. Moravian missions in times of emancipation: Conversion of slaves in Surinam during the nineteenth-century Ellen Klinkers Chapter 14. Slavery, race, and the global fellowship: Religious radicals confront the modern age Jon Sensbach Chapter 15. Conclusion: Moravians and the challenge of writing global history of Diasporic Christianity A. G. Roeber Contributors Selected Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Michele Gillespie is Kahle Associate Professor of History at Wake Forest University. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University, and is the author of numerous publications including Free Labor in a Free World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1790-1860.

Review :
“In bringing these essays together into an argument for diasporic tensions, Pious Pursuits juxtaposes different scholarship on Moravians to expose the contrary nature of trying to synthesize a group of people who lived all over the world over multiple centuries. However, it is that range that makes this collection so good; it is hard to imagine any reader not finding at least a few essays relevant, new, and thought-provoking. And by systematically examining Moravians in the Atlantic world, Pious Pursuits provides a framework for future scholarship on other diasporic communities.”  ·  Journal of American Ethnic History “This collection will be a valuable resource for scholars of the Atlantic world, the eighteenth century, and the history of religion.”  ·  German-Canadian Studies "The present volume, with some highly original research, well written and widely focused, adds an important intercultural perspective to the Atlantic evangelicalism of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and is a very good starting point for further investigations."  ·  H-Atlantic "The reader who takes time to enjoy these essays will no doubt not only learn a lot about Moravians but also about the important role relatively small religious German communities played in a predominantly Anglo-American environment."  ·  H-Soz-u-Kult "... an excellent introduction to key themes of Moravian history and a good basis for further explorations."  ·  German Historical Institute London Bulletin